Finishing Up

Today was the last day of the workshop. We learned to solder a bezel, solder a back plate to the bezel, and solder the bezel onto one of the locket doors, use micro bolts, and many other things.


I got my cuff finished enough for photos, but there's still some file work and some work on the bezel that I need to do. 






I used one of my favorite photos of my son in the locket. Stefan put Pawlie Newman under his shirt and Pawlie stuck his head out the neck opening.  They did this frequently and if Stefan had his head tilted one way, Pawlie had his head tilted the same way.  





The band has some texture on the edges and I randomly stamped some designs and some larger dimples on it.


I enjoyed  this workshop very much. Learning how to do the hinges opens up a lot of new design possibilities. 


Richard Salley and Martina Stein are tentatively planning more classes at Spring Beads.   Contact Spring Beads and get on their notification list for more information. 


Tomorrow I'll head back home.  I plan on taking a pit stop in downtown Huntsville.  There are some  great antique stores there. 

Behind Closed Doors--the Locket Cuff

Today was day two of the workshop with  Richard Salley (assisted by Martina Stein.) Click on the names for info about the workshop, including photos of the projects. 


Today we started day one of the Behind Closed Doors--the Locket-Cuff.  This was a little harder because I had to saw and solder--two things I don't do much of. I was glad to get the opportunity to learn how to do a hinge.  


I etched my metal for the locket and then cut out the frame and locket sections.  While the door section was etching I worked on a practice piece.  I had a lot of trouble and part of the tube didn't solder well.  The practice helped though because the soldering went better on the actual piece. 


Here are some photos of where I was at the end of the day.

Locket in progress

I think I did more filing than I've ever done.  When I finally got my hinges together the two doors overlapped.  I filed and filed and finally got them to meet.  There is still more filing for tomorrow.






My photo is a little small for the inside of the frame so I altered the frame so the opening is smaller than the template.  You can see my soldering was messy.  The center panel will be covered up in the finished piece, fortunately.




  



Part of this class was making some small hammers and bezel pushers.  I don't have any pictures of mine because I barely got started with them.  We also learned a couple of different ways to transfer the images for etching. 


During lunch a couple of us took a little walk and visited a couple of antique stores.  






This house--a bridal shop--had a lot of gingerbread and romantic touches.




Tomorrow we set a stone in a bezel on the locket and make and attach a cuff.

Jewelry Workshop with Richard Salley

I'm currently taking a three-day jewelry workshop with Richard Salley in Spring, TX. I'm really having a good time and enjoying learning some new things, as well as having fun just working on jewelry all day.


Today was the first day and the class is entitled "Lasting Impressions." Here's what I did today:






The two etched copper squares at the top are etchings I did in class to make the stamps.  I still have to rivet the handle onto the back of the head.  


The things I had the most trouble with was setting the stones in the bezel.  I'm having some difficulty getting the bezel cup to bend over the way it is supposed to.  On the plus side, I did solder those bezel cups on well because I've been using a lot of force on them and they are stuck on well. I'll go back to the bezels later. The earrings are the same length.  I don't know why one looks shorter in the photo.


The nautilus shell will probably be riveted to the swirly etched brass and will have a larger cabochon on it.  


We used PNP to transfer the designs for etching and I like it a lot.  


Here's Richard demonstrating soldering the bezel. 






Day Two and Three will be "Behind Closed Doors--the Locket-Cuff.  We will also make some tools. 


The workshop is at Spring Beads in the Old Town part of Spring, Texas.  The neighborhood is full of quaint shops, studios, and galleries.  Plus Spring Beads is full of beads, and supplies for metalworking, enameling, etc. It's the perfect place for a jewelry workshop. 


 Here are some pictures I took while I walked down the street.






The sidewalks are brick or stone.






The shopping possibilities are intriguing.









This building caught my attention:








Here's a close-up.  Apparently you drink wine while doing art. 





Sounds like fun!

Day Four at Adorn Me Part A: Mixed Metal Milagros

Friday I had Mixed Metal Milagros with Richard Salley. Milagros are small religious charms used in many Latin American countries, particularly Mexico and Peru.  They are also quite common here in Texas and other parts of the Southwestern United States. Read about them here.

Richard told us he was inspired by Lorena Angulo's beautiful hearts and other jewelry to make his own "Milagros." (Lorena was also teaching at Adorn Me. I hope to take a class from her someday.)

We did some torch enameling in this class in addition to using mixed metals. Here's Richard Salley demonstrating torch enameling.




 I had a copy of a gem tintype that I used in my pendant, along with a scrap of etched brass that I sawed into a frame.  I used copper and brass.  The flaming heart was sawn from copper and enameled.  I left the copper showing in the heart with the color from the torch instead of pickling it. 




Everything in this piece is riveted or put together with micro-bolts. The young woman looks likes she's waiting and she has an introspective expression on her face.  I imagine she is waiting for her beau, who perhaps is off on a trip or gone to war.  I call this pendant "Waiting for my Love."

Day Two at Adorn Me Part A: Repousse without Pitch

Wednesday was Repousse Without Pitch, taught by Richard Salley.  I found that I really liked doing this. The tools that I made on Tuesday worked well, although I see that I need to make a few more. I did a bird in flight for my pendant.



Instead of pitch we used a non-hardening clay.  Above is the pendant piece taped to my bench block for some more work on the outlining. The black is from annealing the metal with a torch.



Basically the design is outlined on the front, then turned over and placed on the clay where punches and other tools are used to move the metal into a relief. The backside is shown above.




Here I've finished the repousse and have patinaed the piece.  I didn't have time to complete the pendant.  In the corners you can see where I messed up the first stamp I tried and stamped over it.  Probably I will cut all that off.  It's a little big as is anyway. I did use one commercially made stamp to do the stippling in the background, and a small liner that Bren made. All the rest of the work was done using the tools I made in the tool making class.





Here I am doing some lining.




Bren is doing some lining. Bren did two pieces and colored them with the torch.  She got some amazing color on them.  I wish I had a picture of her work.

Day One at Adorn Me

I'm in Houston for the week attending Adorn Me! Today was Tool Making with Richard Salley.  My roomie Bren and I were both in this class.  We're also taking the Repousse without Pitch class taught by Richard tomorrow.  The idea is that we use the tools we make today in the class tomorrow.  I had a little anxiety about whether I would get some tools made for the class tomorrow.  It turned out that making the tools was quicker and easier than I thought it would be.  At the same time some things I thought would be easy turned out to be a little tricky.  We got to play with power tools!  There were several bench grinders with various grind stones and polishing wheels, plus a couple of belt sanders. 

Bren and I both agreed that the line tools were easy.  I tried a teardrop tool and it was harder.  I used a file to cut straight lines across the face of one tool, and deepened the cuts with my saw.  This made a 4 line stamp. It was really hard to get the face of this tool squared so it would stamp correctly.  It's still not perfect, but it's usable. One clever student in class did a set of tools that make a dragonfly about 3/4 of an inch long when put together.

Bren's tools:



My tools:




L. to R.:  short line tool, long line tool, square punch, teardrop punch, round planishing, round punch, 4 line stamp.

I also did a curved line.  The middle of the line came out a little wider than the ends so it looks a little like a waning moon, or the curved end of a flower petal.  I decided I liked it that way so I left it.

Here is Bren with instructor Richard Salley:




We've both taken classes from Richard before.  He's an excellent instructor. The class also included hardening and tempering of the tools, and twisting the middle of the tools to give it a decorative spiral and a place to hold it. Bren and I haven't spiraled any of our tools yet.

Susan Lennart Kazmer set up a store right before lunch.  Here's a shot of the crowd around their booth.  Maybe I'll do a little shopping there this week.

Adorn Me! 2010-- Day One

March 1-8th I was in Houston for Adorn Me!  I had a blast and learned a lot during the workshops.  I'll be posting for the next several days on my classes and experiences. 

One of the hardest things was deciding what workshops to take. I'm mostly self taught or I've learned from books and magazines. I made my final selections by picking the things I wanted to learn that I thought would be very difficult to learn without an instructor. 

Monday was meet the artists night.  I also met my roomies for the event: Bren and Julie.  They were the best roommates and I am so glad I got to know them. From left to right here's Bren, me, and Julie:



Bren is wearing her trades necklace.  Participants brought charms to trade and Bren put hers on a chain necklace.  It looked good and garnered lots of attention. Julie is wearing her Window pendant. 

DAY ONE: Tuesday

Bren and I both had Richard Salley's "Caught in a Trap" class. We cut our metal with tin snips, learned to foldform copper, then dapped it (domed for your non-jewelry people) and filed an opening for our cabachons.  The copper was riveted to a brass backplate. 

Richard Salley is a terrific instructor.  He's annealing a copper plate here:



 I was able to get the pendant finished and got the earrings half done.  Bren finished a pendant and earrings.  Several of the students got three or four pieces done.  Check out the fan photos on Richard's facebook page.  There are a lot of photos from this class and some from the Shield class later in the week. 




I textured the brass backplate with a hammer and a center punch.  I hit the brass with the torch to darken it a little.  All of the antique color on the brass and the copper is from the torch.  The cabachon is a vintage Czech glass cab from the 1940's. 

I left this class with my head spinning with ideas and wanting to get my hands on more cabachons. 

EVENING:

I had Thomas Mann's "Learn to Saw" class in the evening.  I had never used a jewelry saw before. This was a technical class and we learned how the saw works, not just how to manipulate the saw. Understanding how the saw works is particularly valuable when turning corners. I didn't take any pictures of the little parts I sawed because they looked terrible. My straight lines weren't straight and my curved lines zig-zagged. I sawed very slowly.  On the plus side, I only broke one blade.

At the end of the class I figured sawing was something that would  take about six weeks of practice before I would end up with something I would want to wear.  I had signed up for Mann's two day Found Object Sandwich workshop and was now worried about how bad my FOS might look after I sawed it out.  I reminded myself that it was better to have problems when there was an instructor available to help you correct them versus having problems when you're on your own.

Back in the room Julie, Bren, and I finished the evening with show and tell. Getting to see what they made and talking about the classes and what we had learned became a daily ritual and one of my favorite parts of the week.

Next post: my Found Object Sandwich.